Q&A Friday #32: Are Republicans Doomed By Demography?

Question: “Are Republicans doomed by demography? By 2050 whites will be a minority. With the same voting patterns among African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians the right will get 40% or less.

Even if they vote Republican, will small-government philosophy survive?” — Tellerkhan

Answer: Even if whites were a minority in 2050, there’s no reason to assume that any racial block would be voting the same way then that they are now. Republicans are already getting about 35-40% of the Hispanic vote and given that many Hispanics are religious, socially conservative, and more likely to become more affluent in coming years, there’s no reason that percentage couldn’t increase over time.

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Furthermore, I wouldn’t be surprised if 30%-40% or even 50% of blacks were voting Republican in 2050. Probably 1/3 of all blacks should be voting Republican NOW based on their views and young, black voters are even further to the right. According to research done in the journal Soul, “25% of young black voters are self-described conservatives, while 31% are moderates.” That’s a potential block of 56% of the black vote that the GOP has a shot at and with Republicans like Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Michael Steele, Ken Blackwell, Janice Rogers Brown, making a splash on the national scene, don’t be surprised when the GOP starts to make significant gains among black Americans.

Last but not least, you can’t assume that whites will continue to vote for the GOP in such heavy numbers. If the Democrats were to stop veering so far to the left and genuinely move back to the center, there’s no reason why they couldn’t take a significantly larger share of the white vote right now.

What it all comes down to is race and ideology may appear to be connected at times, but there are a lot of other factors involved, and there’s no reason why dramatic shifts in the voting patterns of any racial group can’t occur over the long haul.